Since I can remember, I’ve hated our appliances. We have a nice, new, energy efficient refrigerator in black, but everything else is slightly-yellowing-white, bottom-of-the-line stuff that’s been in here since the house was built.
I’ve wanted to replace them with stainless w/ black trim since I moved in, but since they all worked just fine that seemed like an unnecessary luxury. But a few weeks ago, when the hubby decided to pull out the dishwasher in order to mess with some electric wiring, I decided enough was enought. So I jumped on Craigslist, maneuvered over to the “For Sale – Appliances – By Owner” section and started looking for deals.
And on that day…I didn’t find any. The old white dishwasher got reinstalled. Boooo.
But the next day, I looked again. And whatdya know, a woman had a GE stainless-steel and black gas stove, only three years old, that she was getting rid of for $250 because she wanted the newest “slate” style. Done. So we went and picked up the perfectly – new looking gas range, and it was good.
And then the next weekend, it happened again. A dishwasher, only a year old, stainless steel and black, and even the same GE brand as the range – someone in the suburbs wanted to replace it with one that had a stainless steel tub. The cost to me? $50. Done.
Finally, the next day came my piece de resistance: a stainless vent hood microwave combo that was selling for $150. Completely new, still in box, never been used. The guy bought it and then decided he wanted just a vent instead. Done.
So if you’re keeping track, at this point, we’d spent $450 on new-to-us appliances, and in the process got ones that all happened to be under three years old, were in good working condition, and matched. Amazing.
But I wasn’t done. We went to work installing our new appliances, and then put our old ones on Craigslist as well: $100 for the dishwasher, $200 for the stove, $50 for the vent hood, and $100 for the microwave.
And we got what we asked for them. So today, I’m enjoying how lovely my fully upgraded kitchen is looking. And I got it all to be that way totally, 100% free.
